Should the Editor be asking for donations?

As you will have noticed, every page in Cracroft's Peerage now has a polite suggestion that if the visitor found the page ueseful then they might consider making a donation, however small, to The Peerage Research Trust, the charitable side of Cracroft's Peerage. The six main "gateway" pages have a slightly "punchier" suggestion.

It does not cost too much money to run Cracroft's Peerage, about £12,000 a year, but when this is coming out of your taxed income each year, then eventually the costs start to bite. Back in 2000, when I produced Cracroft's Peerage on a CD, I charged for the CDs. Once Cracroft's Peerage became web-based, I made it free to all (which, incidentally, is one of the aims of The Peerage Research Trust). Was I right to do so, given that at some point I might have to close Cracroft's Peerage down as being too expensive for me to support.